Making of Hack 'n' Slash
Team Hack 'n' Slash - Anthony, Brian, Tony, Ray, Paul, Mark, Duncan, Matt, Say, Sue, Raz, Brandon, Vic
Hack 'n' Slash was inspired by Project Lead, Brandon Dillon's experience with ROM Hacking old Nintendo games, and especially The Legend of Zelda.
Prototyped as part of Amnesia Fortnight 2012, it became a team favorite and in December 2013 we announced that it would see a full release. Built by a team of 16 people, Hack 'n' Slash was released into Early access for PC, Mac and Linux in May 2014, and hit 1.0 that September.
Hack 'n' Slash Concept Art Gallery - With Art By Razmig Mavlian, Mark Hamer and Say Oh
In this Four part Devs Play series from 2 Player Productions, Brandon and the game's producer Matt Hansen get to the roots of this inspiration by cracking open the NES classic The Legend of Zelda, literally.
After taking apart the cartridge, de-soldering, dumping the rom, and booting the game up in an emulator, Brandon sets about altering the running memory of the game to cheat his way through and unlock some unexpected secrets about how the game was developed.
Part 1 features Brandon explaining his personal history with the game along with some of the motivations behind its development.
Part 2 features Brandon and Matt taking apart the Zelda cart to get to the sweet, sweet rom inside.
Brandon and Matt prepare to play the Zelda rom in the best way possible- by disassembling an NES controller and re-wiring it to work as a PC USB controller.
Brandon alters the running memory of the rom in real time, causing some interesting changes to happen in the game